inia Woo /\isce an

Number20 Spring1983

TO THE READERS: be published by Nebraska. At least in quantity, the Lupines appear An Editorial Comment on Woolfians and Lupines to be winning the war of words. But one should not think of it as a battle; rather, as sharing insights and views as Woolf enters her sec­ The Virginia Woolf Miscellany is exactly that, a collection of short notices about Woolf. At the same time I thought that it might ond century, more vital than ever. be useful, and possibly stimulating, to have a mini-theme for this is­ Let me conclude by mentioning a few other relevant publica­ sue, on the considerable question of Virginia Woolf and politics. I tions that have caught my attention in recent months. I was de­ wrote to several people, asking them to contribute. Their responses lighted that Selma Meyerowitz was willing to write for this issue, show a remarkable diversity. Perhaps the most provocative comes and I should like to draw attention to her excellent critical study of from Quentin Bell who offers a firm disagreement with Jane Mar­ Leonard Woolf (Twayne Publishers, 1982). Other books have come cus's well-known and controversial interpretation of Woolf's poli­ out in recent months, and I mention them on the off and unlikely tics. Marcus's own contribution here is an interesting review, but chance the readers of the Miscellany haven't run across them. Per­ should she so wish, of course she can write in response to Bell in a haps of particular interest to Americans is the account of the wo­ subsequent issue. men in that formidable American family, the Pearsall Smiths, in I've been thinking myself about the question of Virginia Woolf's Remarkable Relations (Universe, 1982) by Barbara Strachey (an ob­ politics. I certainly do not have any easy answers. My position, per­ viously appropriate name and relation: Lytton's and Adrian Steph­ haps characteristically, is to reside somewhere in the middle but en's niece). Two delightful odd books are, first, cartoons and a leaning towards the Woolfians, to approach the question with mock journal, with a foreword by Michael Holroyd, Kenneth Ma­ something of the irritating judiciousness of the historian. I do not hood The Secret Sketchbook of a Bloomsbury Lady (St. Martin's mean to be reductionist and to ascribe too much to the origins of Press, 1982) and, rather self-indulgent on the part of the author, but the individuals involved in this debate, but on the whole those who nevertheless with vivid glimpses of Duncan Grant towards the very are Woolfians-which I am using here to indicate those who tend to end of his life, and interesting (but are they totally reliable?) stories see Woolf's politics as less radical and less central to her being-are of his past, in Paul Roche With Duncan Grant in Southern Turkey male, and frequently English. On the whole, those who are Lu­ (Notre Dame Press, 1982). Perhaps the most unusual publication is pines-who see Woolf as more to the left and argue that these poli­ Ellen Hawkes and Peter Manso The Shadow of the Moth: A Novel tical questions are more central to her being-are female, and fre­ of Espionage with Virginia Woolf. Here we have an extremely ac­ quently American. This point was made vivid for me personally tive Woolf, on the trail of spies and along the way attacking male when I was arguing with Jane Marcus at the Woolf meeting at hegemony. Is it a Woolf who really might have existed? Quentin Brown last February. She said to me scornfully-but I believe in a Bell makes clear how much in a practical political way she really moderately friendly manner-you sound just like an Englishman. did, but whether she is actually the character rather similar to the She meant it as an insult, but as part of our argument I took it as American woman reporter in the book is another question. The Bel­ something of a compliment. For I believe that context, as Brenda gium woman who begins it all turns out to be murdered, rather Silver has mentioned to me, is a crucial word in this debate. Ameri­ than having committed suicide. In a rather portentous epilogue, cans may not be sufficiently aware of how important the context, the authors seem to be suggesting a parallel between her and Woolf. Whatever the validity of this comparison, both Woolfians background, nuances, class ambiguities, are for understanding a different culture, and a person within that culture. On the other and Lupines alike will, I believe, enjoy The Shadow of the Moth. Peter Stansky hand, it is possible that the English, and perhaps particular English­ men, might not dwell on the full implications-the fury they con­ Stanford University tain-of statements made by Woolf. Perhaps because I am a histor­ ian of England, although an American, I am more sympathetic to the view that sees Woolf as comparatively less political. As Quen­ tin Bell makes clear in his essay here, Woolf was extremely active politically and was a socialist. But more, perhaps, in England than in other countries, that does not make one a marxist. And in Lupine FURTHER NOTICES TO THE READERS essays-penetrating and interesting as they are-it is perhaps too The next regular issue of VWM will be edited - perhaps we easy to lose sight of what I believe to be the central fact of her be­ should say mediated! - by J. J. Wilson at Sonoma State University, ing: her commitment to her art. That is not necessarily questioned Rohnert Park, Ca. 94928. Notices and articles (no longer than 800 in those essays, but in my own opinion it is too easy for the empha­ words and the shorter the better) should be submitted on or before ses to go wrong. The debate is valuable. Jane Marcus, in her power­ September 15. Your cash donations to keep VWM coming are, of ful, if at times hectoring, prose has added a great deal in quality course, welcome all year round at the above address; if everyone and quantity to Woolf/Lupine studies. on our mailing list were to send in two dollars, we would be solvent Her most recent publication is her very interesting essay "Liber­ - and might even be able to pay the student volunteers who mail ty, Sorority, Misogyny" in Carolyn C. Heilbrun & Margaret R. Hig­ out the Miscellany so faithfully each Fall and Spring ... onnet eds. The Representation of Women in Fiction Selected Pa­ For those of you who sent in $5.00 or more donations for Laura pers from the English Institute, 1981 (The Johns Hopkins University Moss Cottlieb's elegant and thorough cumulative INDEX TO Press, 1983). There is also her essay "Storming the Toolshed" in VWM, 1973 -1982, thank you for your support and you will be re­ Signs 1982 vol. 7, no. 3. In 1981 she edited New Feminist Essays on ceiving your copy as soon as it is printed up. Orders are still wel­ Virginia Woolf (University of Nebraska Press) and this coming fall come; checks should be made out, as always, to the VWM Founda­ a second volume of essays, Virginia Woolf: A Feminist Slant also to tion, and, as always, are tax deductible. VIRGINIA WOOLF, HER POLITICS In Three Guineas she toys with the idea that women might com­ pete with their brothers in the accumulation of capital. But this When the Conservatives were routed in 1905, Vanessa and Vir­ ginia Stephen went to Trafalgar Square and rejoiced. The long would mean that the daughters of the rich would liberate them­ selves by exploiting the daughters of the poor. Being a socialist I faces of George and Gerald Duckworth may have added to their joy, but it was what one might have expected; they were always think that she appreciated the dilemma and that it is for this reason left of center, Virginia being a little further left than her sister. In that she argues that too much money is bad for the soul; she pro­ the same way she took more interest in the Working Men's College posed that women should bind themselves to "poverty, chastity, than did the other three Stephens or Clive Bell, with whose political derision, and freedom from unreal loyalties."• Whatever else it work I think she sympathised. Leonard Woolf, when she married may be this is not a marxist solution. him, was becoming a socialist and they were both interested in the Finally, for what it may be worth, I offer my own personal testi­ Women's Cooperative Movement; she attended the Fabian Confer­ mony. I knew Virginia quite well enough to know that she was not ence in 1913, just before her worst breakdown, and when she re­ a marxist. covered, joined the Society. She was secretary of her local branch It is sad that so talented a person as Professor Marcus should be of the Women's Cooperative Guild. Later she became secretary of so silly. But there is worse, for confusion breeds confusion. The the Rodmell Labour Party. Professor orders the Virginia of her imagination to the barricades. Leonard said that Virginia was "the least political animal that The real Virginia refuses to march. She is punished, reduced to be­ has lived" but was anxious to destroy the legend of the "frail inva­ ing "a sniper in the ranks;" she is accused of antisemitism, found lidish lady living in an Ivory Tower;" he points out that she worked guilty of cowardice; worse still she is cowed by the enemy; when at "the grass roots of the Labour Party."' Despite the contradiction, she published "A Society," Desmond Maccarthy "showed his there is some truth in both statements. Virginia, when she met poli­ claws;" they were not very terrifying - he said that it was "not her ticians, seemed more interested in their personalities than their po­ best work;" nevertheless she was overawed and "she never re­ 9 licies, and seemed to find politicians of her own sex, even Margaret printed the sketch." For those who knew Virginia and Desmond, Llewellyn Davies, worthy but tedious. But she did, I think, enjoy the story has a richly comic aspect, but also, if one cares for the de­ her work as a branch secretary. I have no doubt that when she got cencies of scholarship, it is sufficiently tragic. But if one believes a vote she used it for the Labour Party and for no one else. that one has oneself set this mare upon her nest, it is infuriating. To what part of that heterogeneous body she belonged it would Quentin Bell be hard to say. Her strong feelings and political activity on behalf Cobbe Place, Beddingham, Lewes of her sex complicated the issue, for feminism, to use a word she Leonard Woolf, Downhill All the Way, p. 27. Virginia Woolf "Memories of a Working Women's Guild," Collected Essays IV, p. 141. did not like, is compatible with political reaction; so, in the circum­ Virginia Woolf. Diary (May 31. 1929). stances of the 1930s, was pacifism. Neither of her two polemics is 4 "Memories of a Working Women's Guild," p. 140. 5 Quentin Bell, Virginia Woolf, II, p.219. socialist; it is hard to see how they could have been since both are 6 Jane Marcus, No More Horses, pp.269 and 266; also New feminist Essays, xviii. concerned with the grievances of a privileged elite. Virginia had a 7 Virginia Woolf, "The Artist and Politics," Collected Essays, 11, p. 230. Virginia Woolf, Three Guineas, pp. 112 -145. deep and genuine sympathy for the kind of woman who provides New Feminist Essays, p. 27, p. 2; also Majumdar and Mclaurin, Virginia Woolf: The Critical Heri­ cheap labour for industry, but it was a cause which she left to other tage, p. 91. advocates. It is necessary to remember that she was born a hundred years ago if we would understand her class consciousness. Even when she exclaims that the "working classes ... are not downtrodden, envious, and exhausted, they are humourous, vigorous and inde­ pendent," she is t6o honest not to recognize that there is a barrier and the barrier is impassable. 2 '"We are winning' said Nelly (of the 1929 Election) ... I was shocked to think that we both desire the Labour Party to win - Why? Partly I don't want to be ruled by Nel­ ly."'

She was a kind of Fabian. She wanted change from above, but 1 not by Nelly. She had no doubts about the value of her contribu­ "I AM AN OUTSIDER": tion: " ... ladies want Mozart and Cezanne and Shakespeare" ... The Politics of Virginia Woolf these had to be socialists.• Last autumn Karen Offen and I taught a course on European wo­ Here I must invent an interruption. "Surely she was a marxist? men, the family and social thought. For the latter part of the course That learned and eloquent lady, Professor Marcus had said so; it the reading included de Beauvoir, Freud, Aleksandra Kollontai, D. must be true." The matter is on my conscience. In my biography of H. Lawrence, Lenin, Leon Trotsky, Rebecca West and Virginia Virginia I pointed out how close "The Leaning Tower" comes to Woolf. The class agreed that in the context of the course Virginia marxist theory. 5 For reasons which will appear, I did not call her a Woolf's was the most radical political piece. marxist, but if she had lived longer she might have become a marx­ The students were struck by the wit and incisiveness of Woolf's ist. argument in Three Guineas, which they recapitulated as follows: My suggestion seems to have fallen on too fertile ground. It Middle-class women's movements of the nineteenth century seems that I have got this poor lady (should I say "poor person,") sought justice, equality and liberty for all, not merely for women, into intellectual trouble. but for women and men. Yet, wherever they did so, whether in poli­ For what a monster has been engendered. Virginia was a marxist, tics, in the universities, in the civil service, in professions like medi­ not we are assured a "vulgar" but a "genteel marxist" yet one cine, or in the arts, they were obstructed by professional men, that "deeply committed to the revolution."• Such a statement requires is by their fathers and brothers. In 1937, (the time of composing abundant evidence. It should not be too hard to find; there are her Three Guineas) many European men-as Jews, or as democrats-be­ published works, her letters, her diaries, the memoirs and letters of cause of their race, their religion, or their politics-were being dis­ her friends. There surely we shall find the story of her conversion, criminated against. Their status as outsiders, (highly visible in the her study of marxist literature, her reaction to the 1917 revolution new fascist societies) Woolf believed, ought, at last, to enable men and N.E.P., her views on Stalin and on the General Strike, her dis­ to empathise with women's situation. Fascism begins at home; we cussions with opponents or with comrades. But they are not to be cannot fight it in Germany, or Italy or Spain, she argued, without found. They are not there. There is a little evidence but it points in eradicating it first in our very midst where patriarchy dictates to fe­ another direction. When she wrote an article for the Daily Worker, male members of the family. "We must crush [the dictator] in our she made statements which might indeed vex a marxist.7 When this own country," she wrote, and, more lightly but even more insight­ was pointed out, she was amused, but a little puzzled. Leonard and fully: "Here we go round the mulberry tree, the sacred tree of pro­ I were there at the time. She asked us to explain. perty."' -2- Virginia Woolf recognized a dilemma for educated women who Her sensitivity to criticism is well known, yet, in the case of Three had won a toehold in male professions jealously guarded against Guineas her diary reiterates her indifference, as though she were outsiders. Such women were forced either to return to the private bracing herself against poor reviews-especially from her own cir­ house with its "nullity, immorality, hypocrisy and servility" or to cle. She was however, unable to expell some of her most deeply become part of "civilization," that is to become involved in profes­ held values; she worried about "vulgarity", about being too "insis­ sional "jealousy, pugnacity, and greed," leading inevitably to com­ tent"-in sum about being superficially too political. She was afraid petitiveness and war. Whether, and on what terms to join this "civi­ of: "autobiography in public"-" lization" fully was a matter of critical importance. It was the most Nevertheless her greatest fear was that the book would not urgent question to be pondered by women at that precarious his­ "dimple the surface."" Woolf knew that Three Guineas was an im­ toric moment in the 1930"s when fascism threatened to destroy ci­ portant statement of her values-a statement she was compelled to vilization. publicize. She claimed that there was "more to it" than to A Room From her diary we know how strongly Woolf felt about publish­ of One's Own. Hence she was able to become "vulgar", "insistent" ing her ideas on this subject. For six years she had developed them and political. In the writing of Three Guineas she had achieved a "violently, persistently, pressingly and compulsorily."' She had in­ spiritual freedom, a sort of "esctasy." 14 "My mind is made up... I tended to write Three Guineas ever since her visit to Delphi in am an outsider. I'm free." 15 1932, having laid the foundation by using the themes in her speech Susan Groag Bell to the London Society for Women's Service in January 1931 4 and Center for Research on Women prepared the literary world for her ideas by reworking them in her Stanford University novel The Years, published shortly before Three Guineas. Yet she Virginia Woolf, A Writer's Diary, ed. Leonard Woolf, (London and New York, 1953), p. 282. Virginia Woolf. Three Guineas, (London, 1938), p. 113. feared that "the whole of Europe might be in flames" at any mo­ A Writer's Diary, pp. 278, 284. ment. "And my book may be like a moth dancing over a bonfire­ 4 Mitchell A. Leaska, ed. The Pargiters by Virginia Woolf (New York and London, 1977), pp. consumed in less than one second."' The intensity of her style re­ xxv ii - xliv. 5 A Writer's Diary, p. 282. flects the urgency with which she wanted to force women to think 6 Three Guineas, p. 94 about their fate before it was too late. "The moment is short: it 7 Memoir of Julian Bell, Appendix C, in Quentin Bell, Virginia Woolf, vol. 2, (London, 1972}, p. 259. may last five years; ten years, or perhaps only a matter of a few Quentin Bell, Virginia Woolf, vol. 2, pp. 204 - 5. months longer. But the questions must be answered; and they are Jean Stead, "The Fading of Bloomsbury," The Guardian, (Saturday, March 6, 1982), p. 10. 10 Berenice A. Carroll, "To Crush Him in Our Own Country': The Political Thought of Virginia so important that if all the daughters of educated men did nothing, Woolf," Feminist Studies, vol. 4, no. 1(February1978): pp. 99-131. Carroll develops the from morning to night, but consider ... from every angle, if they theme of Woolf's political thought concerning class structure, and anti·imperialism in such did nothing but ponder it and analyze it, and think about it and novels as Mrs. Dalloway and To the Lighthouse. See also, Jane Marcus: "Art and Anger," Feminist Studies, 4, no. 1 (February 1978): pp. 69 - 98; "Storming the Too/shed," SIGNS, 7, read about it and pool their thinking and reading, and what they no. 3 (Spring 1982): pp. 622 · 40; "liberty, Sorority, Misogyny," in The Representation of see and what they guess, their time would be better spent than in Women in Fiction ed. Carolyn G. Heilbrun and Margaret R. Higonnet, (The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore and London 1983), pp. 60· 97; and Marcia Yudkin, "Reflections any other activity now open to them."• on Woolf's Three Guineas, Women's Studies International forum, vol. S, no. 3/4, (1982): pp. In her memoir of her nephew Julian Bell, killed in July 1937 in 263 · 69 on Woolf's broad anit·militarism. 11 Aristotle's Politics and Poetics, trans., B. Jowett and T. Twining (New York, 1957), pp. 5 · 6. the Spanish Civil War-as she was in the midst of composing Three 12 A Writer's Diary, p. 282. Guineas-Woolf underscored her sympathy with the cause of liber­ 13 Ibid. 14 Ibid. p. 283. ty and her determination to fight for it intellectually. The Spanish 15 Ibid. p. 282. conflict and Julian's death exacerbated her horror of war and her accusation in Three Guineas that a male civilization made such wars inevitable. "I should evolve some plan for fighting English ty­ ranny."' Yet the radical analysis Woolf applied to her own society and the passion with which she exposed the parallels between the long­ NOTICE: Caedmon has a new cassette of Claire Bloom read ing se­ standing historical dictatorships over women in the English social lections from A Room of One's Own. structure and in continental fascism is not seen as such by her other Bell nephew Quentin, who, in his biography of Woolf, wrote NOTICE: California State University, Long Beach's Special Collec­ that Three Guineas was "the product of an odd mind" and who, tions Librarian, Mr. John Ahouse, informs VWM that they have re­ moreover considered Woolf's view of the connection between wo­ ceived, as a gift from the family of the late Elizabeth E. Nielsen, men's status and the fascist threat "wholly inadequate."• Ten years five previously unpublished letters by Virginia Woolf. Written near later, Quentin Bell has stated in an interview that he was baffled by the end of her life, the letters refer to the growing threat of war: the way Woolf had been raised to the status of Joan of Arc by "There is no doubt that work is the only consolation at this time." American feminists; that "she wasn't a feminist and she wasn't political."• Wooif's sense of politics was not a matter of immediate practice but rather one of persuasion through the development of thought. She understood that politics is concerned with issues of power, and that power relationships are reproduced in our every-day lives. A LEONARD AND VIRGINIA WOOLF: A Case of graduate student in the class cited Berenice Carroll's fine essay 10 Political Influence or Political Parallels? distinguishing the superficiality of the politics of the hustings (for Virginia Woolf often commented that her husband Leonard was which Virginia Woolf admitted her boredom and dislike) from the much more knowledgeable about politics and economics than she depth of real politics as analyzed by Aristotle for whom "the deter­ was, 1 thus seeming to suggest either that she was politically naive mination of what is just is the principle of order in political or that she may have been influenced by his greater expertise. society."" Virginia Woolf has written a most penetrating and per­ Leonard, however, readily acknowledged Virginia's political cons­ suasive book about justice (or rather the lack of it) in the order of ciousness and commented that her sensitivity to social and histori­ society as she knew it. She wrote with the expressed purpose of cal experience made Virginia "the last person who could ignore the making her readers think about effecting a fundamental change in political menaces" of the times.' Moreover, Leonard realized that civilization. She was a writer, not an orator, she was in fact a politi­ A Room of One's Own and Three Guineas were important political cian who used her pen. pamphlets, and that Virginia had been involved in practical politics Woolf's own attitude to Three Guineas may be partly responsi­ by her participation at the grassroots level in Labour party politics ble for her biographer nephew's point of view. She knew that her and the Women's Co-operative Guild. violent attack on the universities questioned the very culture and A study of their literary work reveals that both Leonard and Vir­ civilization that had formed the men who were her closest and ginia Woolf were committed to illuminating the way social and dearest friends including her husband, her brothers and nephew. economic institutions affect individual and communal life. At the -3- theoretical level, they examined the class system and the influence of social and economic factors on individual psychology, interper­ sonal relations, national standards of value, and international poli­ tics. Leonard studied the interaction between individual or social behavior and the structure of society - its form of government, economic and class structure, and social institutions - arguing that the institutions of society shape individual and communal psychol­ ogy, and that changes in communal psychology tend to modify the structure of society. Similarly, Virginia identified the way class po­ sition affects the writer's vision of life and aspects of his craft in several of her literary essays which stress that changes in social ex­ perience cause changes in art, and that therefore, the artist is sub­ ject to the influences of class as social and economic conditions shape the elements of art. 3 At the level of practical politics, both Leonard and Virginia were involved in the women's movement through their work with the Working Women's Guild of the Co-operative Movement. While studying the Co-operative Movement, Leonard was particularly im­ pressed by the Women's Guild and even believed that the emanci­ pation of women might prove to be one of the greatest social revo­ lutions in history.• Virginia, also impressed with the Women's Guild", conducted monthly meetings of a branch of the Guild, and in 1930 she wrote an introductory essay entitled "Memories of a Working Women's Guild" to a collection of essays by the Guilds­ women entitled Life as We Have Known It. In this essay, she com­ Review of Grace Radin's: VIRGINIA WOOLF: THE YEARS mented that although she felt alienated from the Guildswomen be­ (University of Tennessee Press, 1982} cause of class differences, she believed that they were demanding ECHO'S BODY important social and legal reforms. She also recognized that the How interesting it is that "the bottom of the barrel" in Woolf stu­ women's attempts to control their lives represented a powerful dies, to quote a guardian of the estate in these very pages-that is, protest against the inequities of the class system. the manuscript drafts of novels, so reluctantly released into print, In the 1930s when political consciousness was of utmost import­ have yielded such crisp and delicious fruit. Louise DeSalvo's edi­ ance, both Leonard and Virginia protested against the rise of fas­ tion of Melymbrosia, an early version of The Voyage Out, has been cism. Leonard viewed man's acceptance of tyranny and authoritar­ greeted with acclaim by the New York Times, and by scholars who 5 ian social rule as a reversion to barbarism. Political beliefs were now have the materials to compare the draft to the published ver­ for Leonard an indication of social and personal life. Commenting sion, as Stephen Hero is compared to A Portrait of the Artist as a that "people cannot be savage in politics and remain at the same Young Man. In the 1977 Bulletin of the New York Public Library re­ time civilized in their private and social lives,"• he protested the re­ valuation of The Years, Grace Radin published the "two enormous jection of reason and the turn toward religion and intuition in phi­ chunks" of galley proof removed at the last moment, and reprinted losophy, science and art. Like Leonard, Virginia claimed that the here. We also have Mitchell Leaska's edition of The Pargiters, now political world was an indication of the private world, commenting eagerly devoured by students in paperback, as if to belie Woolf's that "the tyrannies of the one are the tyrannies and servilities of the retreat from her brilliant original conception of the novel, alternat­ 7 other." Virginia first identified the psychology of male domination ing chapters of fiction with chapters of fact. Did Woolf imagine that a class system creates in A Room of One's Own, and in Three when she left these masses of manuscript behind her, that her read­ Guineas she associated male domination with nationalism and mi­ ers would become "pargetters" themselves, patching up and plas­ litarism and, hence, with war. Later, a short essay, "Thoughts on tering together the fictional and factual parts as reconstruction of Peace During an Air Raid," argues further that "agressiveness, ty­ her most popular novel? Since Woolf de-constructed or dis­ ranny, and thl:! insane love of power'' are typical of both male dom­ embowelled the novel herself, readers and critics trying to patch ination and fascism,• and that th~ patriarchal system creates "sub­ up the parts are like the ancients trying to piece together the scat­ conscious Hitlerism," or the "desire to dominate and enslave."• tered parts of Echo's body. And since repetition is so insistently the Virginia would thus readily have agreed with Leonard's view that signature of Woolf's art, it is perhaps fitting that the role of her "one of the greatest of social evils has always been class subjec­ modern readers and critics is that of pargetters and collectors of 0 tion and class domination."' our Echo's scattered remains. Since a social and political consciousness shaped both Leonard Splended as Grace Radin's study of the manuscripts of The Years and Virginia's writing, it would be difficult to determine which one is she reminds us that more remain in the magic barrel of the Berg. influenced the other. Rather, it might be necessary to recognize R~din reveals similar findings in her study of The Pargiters to Lou­ that there were consistent political parallels in their thought and ise DeSalvo's study of Melymbrosia, an even more socialist and work. feminist text, and explicit lesbian passages. The 1910 section reads Selma Meyerowitz like a debate which might be going on among present-day femin­ California State University, San Jose ists. Rose, a male-identified feminist, works for votes for women, but does not question the patriarchal system. Maggie and Elvira, in­ Virginia Woolf, The letters of Virginia Woolf, Volume II: 1912 - 1922, ed. Nigel Nicolson ternationalist outsiders like Woolf herself, are isolated and ignor­ and Joanne Trautmann {New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976), p. 23. Leonard Woolf, Downhill All the Way: An Autobiography of the Years 1919 to 1939 (Lon- ant of the problems of poor women. They are not even aware that don: The Hogarth Press, 1968), p. 27. . it is against the law to disseminate information about birth control. 3 See especially "The Russian Point of View," "The Artist and Politics," and " The Leaning When Rose explains that most women haven't got three guineas to Tower." 4 See "What is Democracy?" in The Modern State, ed. Mary Adams (Port Washington, N.Y.: consult a Harley Street gynecologist, they propose writing to the Kennikat Press, 1933). Times demanding free contraception for all. Maggie doesn't want a 5 See Quack, Quack! (London: The Hogarth Press, 1936) and Barbarians Within and Without (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, Inc., 1939). vote because "Englishwomen in politics are prostitutes. Every pa­ Leonard Woolf. Quack, Quack!. p. 78 . triarch has his prostitute. She comforts him and then asks for fav­ 7 Virginia Woolf, Three Guineas (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1938), p. 142. Virginia Woolf. Death of the Moth and Other Essays (Middlesex. England: Penguin. 1961), ors." Maggie and Elvira have a crude Freudian analysis of Rose's p. 209. ferocious feminism: "her powers of expression have ... been atro­ 9 Virginia Woolf. Death of the Moth, p. 210. phied by a hideous childhood experience." This is interesting be­ 10 Leonard Woolf, The Journey Not the Arrival Matters: An Autobiography of the Years 1939 to 1969 (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. 1969). p. 75. cause the character of Rose is based on Ethel Smyth, whose mem- -4- oirs reveal a sublimely happy childhood. It was Woolf herself who says or conference papers began to attract other books. A Canadi­ claimed to have been sexually molested. an centenary conference on E. M. Forster, organized by Judith Elvira tries to imagine Rose in the arms of a young man, but is Sherer Herz and Robert K. Martin resulted in E. M. Forster: Centen­ shocked into speechlessness when Maggie tells her that Rose loves ary Revaluations, which was published last year, and most recently women. " But whereas . .. I could think of Rose with equanimity in the Press had brought out another definitive edition of Virginia the arms of a man . .. the other thought is loathsome; just for ten Woolf's manuscripts, Susan Dick's "To the lighthouse": The Orig­ seconds. But in the one case, you see Maggie I covered them with inal Holograph Draft. syringa petals. In the other- I didn't cover them (at all}-1 saw them, It became increasingly clear with the publication of these books naked; which seems to prove Maggie, that (the nature) of the act it­ that there was a need and an opportunity for an interdisciplinary self is a mixture of the ridiculous and the repulsive; or am I wrong?" series based on the achievements of the Bloomsbury Croup. The (TP, IV, p. 69 - 70) Crace Radin suggests that lesbian love appears current popularity of the Croup has been successfully exploited by naked of the trappings of sentimental romance because it has had commercial publishers in England and the United States, yet this no literature like heterosexual love to strew flower petals on the has not led to their initiating scholarly studies of the Croup's work. lovers' bodies. Elvira says "when you said Rose flung herself into Indeed there has been an apparent reluctance on the part of even the arms of Mildred in a greenhouse, a shock; horror; terror .. . scholarly publishers to bring out valuable specialist studies of such something that lights up the whole of the dim past of the human subjects as Virginia Woolf's texts. And of course such publications race." Indeed. And quite possibly the past of the writer herself. require subsidies from organizations like the Canadian Federation While these passages do not appear in The Years, they do explain for the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Humanities, why Rose is showered with rose petals at the end of the novel. The or the research boards of universities. expunged flower, syringa, one must point out, is the mock-orange The response to the announcement of Bloomsbury Studies has used in bridal wreaths. Syrinx was one of Diana's nymphs who been very encouraging. Inquiries have been received from scholars turned into a reed to escape being raped by Pan. The reed was working not only on Virginia Woolf, E. M. Forster, and Bloomsbury made into a flute, perhaps too obvious a reference to Ethel Smyth, in general, but also on Clive Bell, Vanessa Bell, and Leonard the author of Female Pipings in Eden, which offers a myth of the Woolf. (But curiously no one seems to be interested in Lytton Stra­ origins of women's music. Echo's refusal of Pan enraged him so chey, whose writing still awaits good criticism.) And the kinds of that he had her body torn apart and scattered, but each part con­ studies underway are surprisingly varied in method and scope. tinued to sing from its hiding place in the earth, even imitating They include criticism, political philosophy, literary history, textual Pan's pipe. Perhaps one threatened maiden was singing to the studies, biography, bibliography, aesthetics, and visual art. The in­ other, not to Pan at all, as Eliot's mermaids sing each to each. At creasing interest in these last two fields is a welcome addition to any rate, the scattered parts of the body of Virginia Woolf's manu­ the interdisciplinary range of Bloomsbury Studies. scripts continue to sing, long after their author is dead, and we are Some scholars and critics, it is true, have misgivings about stu­ grateful to scholars like Crace Radin for shedding light on them. dies that focus on the Bloomsbury Group. There seems to be a feel­ Jane Marcus ing that such work will somehow be reductive-that the indepen­ University of Texas at Austin dence and originality of the work of Virginia Woolf, E. M. Forster, or Lytton Strachey will be diminished by emphasizing the Group's influence on them. But the more that is learned about Bloomsbury, the more one realized that the creative influences exerted within the Group were mutual. Bloomsbury's works obviously can and should be compared with those outside the Group. Yet it was in Bloomsbury that the individuals expected the most sympathetic and searching criticism and often received the most stimulating in­ terpretations of their work. It should be stressed, however, that the general aim of studying the Bloomsbury Group's work-is not so much the mapping of often intangible influences as the comparing of works, the tracing of their interconnections, in order to under­ stand them better. One question that always arises concerning the study of Blooms­ BLOOMSBURY STUDIES bury is the nature of the Group and who belonged to it. There is no When it was announced last fall that the University of Toronto longer much question about the core members, though there will Press was inaugurating a series of books called Bloomsbury Stu­ always be some about peripheral figures. As far as Bloomsbury dies, the response was enthusiastic and somewhat incredulous. Studies is concerned, the conception of the Group is an open one Was it really possible in these bad times when scholarly publishers that includes early and late members as well as those who were were reducing their offerings that one of them was actually ex­ associated with the Group through close friendships with one or panding theirs? The answer is not that the great recession of the more of the original members. As for others, the focus on them for eighties somehow missed Ontario but rather that Bloomsbury Stu­ Bloomsbury Studies probably ought to be on their relationship with dies has been some ten years in the making. The first book of the the Group's work. A study of Katherine Mansfield, for example, series to be submitted to the Press was J. W. Graham's definitive does not in itself seem a likely subject for the series, but a compari­ edition of the two holograph drafts of The Waves. The complexi­ son of her writing with Virginia Woolf's or E. M. Forster's might ties of that edition resulted in its actually being published the year very well be. after my The Bloomsbury Group: A Collection of Memoirs, Com­ Finally, it should be mentioned that although most of the contri­ mentary, and Criticism, which appeared in 1975 and was reprinted butors have, in fact, been Canadian citizens or residents, Blooms­ in 1977. The next year the University of Toronto Press published bury Studies is a North American series. The University of Toronto the proceedings of a conference on john Maynard Keynes and the Press is incorporated in the United States as well as Canada, and it Cambridge backgrounds of the discussion and criticism that led to co-publishes the books of Bloomsbury Studies with various English his extraordinarily influential The General Theory of Employment, firms such as The Hogarth Press, The Macmillan Press, and Croom, Interest, and Money. The editors of Keynes, Cambridge, and the Helm, Ltd. General Theory were the economists Don Patinkin and J. Clark Inquiries and suggestions concerning the series are welcome and Leith, and their book helped make Bloomsbury Studies interdisci­ should be sent to the General Editor, c/o Department of English, 7 plinary, as it should be. King's College Circle, University of Toronto, Toronto M5S 1A1, The reception of these books and the willingness of the Universi­ Canada. ty of Toronto Press to invest in such ventures as expensive scholar­ S. P. Rosenbaum ly editions of manuscripts or not always profitible collections of es- University of Toronto -5- VIRGINIA WOOLF SOCIETY: REPORT At its business meeting in Los Angeles last December, the Vir­ members who are presently employed. Current members will be ginia Woolf Society named new officers, forged an alliance receiving a letter from the Society; if you wish to join-or cannot with the Miscellany, and planned for its future. remember if you have before-write to Elaine Ginsberg. First, the officers: President, Susan M. Squier, SUNY Stony Finally, we decided on topics for the two Society panels at Brook; Treasurer, Jane Marcus, University of Texas, Austin; Sec­ the 1983 MLA Convention in New York. One will focus on retary, Elaine K. Ginsberg, West Virginia University. Louise A. Woolf and the moderns; for information, contact Jane Lillien­ DeSalvo, who with Mitchell A. Leaska and Grace Radin, has feld, Dept. of English, Assumption College, Worcester, Massa­ kept the Society alive for the past three years, and Madeline chusetts 01609. The second panel will explore Woolf in the Moore, one of its founding members, will serve as Society "his­ classroom; for information, contact Madeline Moore, Dept. of torians." English, University of California, Santa Cruz, California 95064. Second, future projects: What emerged most clearly from the In order to encourage students in their research, we will be re­ discussion in Los Angeles was a need for more communication serving one place on the pedagogy panel for a paper by a stu­ about who was doing what and where. As a result, with this is­ dent, though the topic need not be the teaching of Woolf. sue, the Society will have a column in each of the regular issues Although we cannot predict what the next hundred years will of the Miscellany, as well as producing an additional issue each bring, the Society feels greatly optimistic about the immediate fall devoted to bibliographical material on Woolf scholarship future of Woolf studies. and events. This special issue will be available to members of Brenda R. Silver the Virginia Woolf Society only. To include as full coverage as Dartmouth College possible in this special issue, we urge everyone to send informa­ tion about works-in-progress, theses, publications, media mater­ ials (films, etc.), conferences, events, etc. to Elaine Ginsberg (Dept. of English, WVU, Morgantown, West Virginia 26506). Elaine will be co-editing the bibliographical issue with Laura Moss Gottlieb, who is presently preparing the index for the Mi~ cellany. Next, membership and dues: In order to finance this special issue of the Miscellany, as well as other Society functions, we established a scale for membership dues: $5 per year for gradu­ ate students, the unemployed, and emeriti; $10 per year for all

Sonoma State University Nonprofit Org. Virginia Woolf Miscellany Bulk Rate Department of English U.S. POSTAGE Rohnert Park, California 94928 PAID Permit No. 7 Cotati, CA